How to convert a byte array to a string?

Question

How do I convert a byte array to a string? Is this the correct syntax?

byteArray.toString();

• Marcelo Cantos: Have you tried it? Was there a problem?
• Mitch Wheat: what does the compiler say? "Computer Says No!"???
• xydev: @ Mitch Wheat i am getting different anwsers for bytearray.toString() and public void convertByteArrayToString() { byte[] byteArray = new byte[] {87, 79, 87, 46, 46, 46}; String value = new String(byteArray); System.out.println(value); }

Answer 1

The Best way to convert bytearray to String is

public void convertByteArrayToString(Charset encoding) {
 byte[] byteArray = new byte[] {87, 79, 87, 46, 46, 46};
 String value = new String(byteArray, encoding);
 System.out.println(value);
 }

• Nick H: String(byte[]) uses the system's default encoding. You should use String(byte[], String) to specify an encoding, which depends on what your encoding your bytes are in.
• xydev: @Nick i am getting an error String value = new String(byteArray, "text/xml; charset=utf-8"); as unsupported encoding exception
• xydev: @Nick also tried String value = new String(byteArray, "charset=utf-8")
• Nick H: It should be a string such as UTF-8. See download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/nio/charset/… for some standard charsets.

Answer 2

You need to supply an encoding, otherwise you get the system default encoding, essentially a random value.

String value = new String(byteArray, encoding);